415 replies to this topic

[hyphaenation]

Thanks for the kind words and stopping in Lookin ...

The pucks are more a method than a recipe as you probably gathered. It can be any pasteurized/sterilized sub material pressed into shape. Different things give you different results. I've made no secret out of the fact that I generally use stuff from around the yard. First I try colonizing and fruiting on the material (even tiny test jars) and when something shows good promise I carry on with it , paying close attention to what contams easy and discard that.

If you do the above mentioned "water-boarding" of the sub pillow case (place board over case and stand on it) , you'll expel most of the extra moisture (of which there's lots). If you weren't to take care to get the majority of moisture out before pressing the pucks , you'd have to squeeze like hell and it would be running out. Pre-squeezing it makes it so you just tuck the sub in and push down with your knuckles to knead it and as the container gets filled push with your thumbs to tuck it all in.

That's with yogurt containers. There's 2 sizes of those , the normal one and the taller one. The 500 gm normal size is the best i've found so far. Easy to maneuver if you have to pick it up or move it , super easy to make , fits well in a 2 litre pop bottle for a micro-grow ...



Anything bigger and you start to get unwieldy and difficult to handle. Outdoors a larger puck could work with lots of spawn to make it grow fast from the inside out. Every time i've made a large puck , i've regretted not hitting it with more spawn to make it go faster. They are totally feasible , but you need the space and the spawn and to have a solid game plan. Its a lot to waste if your just half cocked growing a large puck and you get a contam.

Personally I like the smaller ones ...

I'm going to place yogurt containers of the same size used to make them back over each one now , so as to minimize moisture loss and drying. They colonize quite a bit better with the extra humidity shield on them. Then I'll take them off for fruiting.

Icecream pails would rock , provided you hit it heavy with spawn , even 50/50 would be advantaggeous for quick consolidation. Make sure to get extra moisture beyond field capacity out of the sub. Have a decent sized breather hole and lid set up. Don't let it go near 80 F as the mycelium itself creates heat and if the air outside is 82 or 83F inside it will be higher , maybe to high.

What kind of sub were you thinking on pressing ?

Edited by hyphaenation, 06 May 2012 - 05:15 PM.

[hyphaenation]

Decided to tidy up the Puck tub. It had some manure shrapnel that fell into it when I was transferring the Pucks. Not much debris , but enough to cause me to want to remove it. Will now save two birds with one Hempseed , by adding plastic container domes over each Puck. This will actually achieve several things ...

- I put the clear plastic food containers over each Puck and remove it from the tub (now easy to handle).
- When all the Pucks are out I completely cleaned the tub of debris , wiped it down.
- The Pucks are placed back in the tub and now the container (no lid , upside-down) acts as a humidity shield. Uncolonized Pucks need humidity to thrive.
- Clear containers over the Pucks allows viewing the mycelium growing so i can gauge where each one is at for colonization , and possible contams.




This set up feels much better. Later when the Pucks are 100% colonized i'm less worried about pieces of them falling off or having them out and loose in the tub. This will also speed up colonization I believe , to have these humidity shields on each. Looks good to ascetically.

Said I wasn't going to look to much , but it's addictive. Definite signs of white mycelium exploding out in all directions.

Looking at the pic above now that i've posted it , I can see that I might have put a bit more Popcorn spawn in the mix , its very close to enough anyways. Its a bit of a toss up because if you put to much the culture can get lazy , like say if you put 70 % spawn. I like the mycelium to run through the material and work hard to consolidate. Seems like there's a point where you can make it to easy for the culture and it sends out signals to not grow vigorously , as it would in nature. At close to 80 F temps , these pucks should colonize quite well. Time will tell ...

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Edited by hyphaenation, 06 May 2012 - 07:08 PM.

[psycheholic]

this is good stuff, grow on my brutha grow on

[MycoDani]

Love it! I love how you make those Pucks Hyph I do it with coir and p corn this may be simple for you but you have given me some inspiring ideas! Thank you my friend!:heart:

Red boys are a good strain haven't had any or grew them in eons so it's good to see them!

~Dani

[hyphaenation]

I do it with coir and p corn

Far out Dani ! Its amazing eh , when you first mix the Popcorn and Coir and press ... the colonized Popcorn explodes from every direction and growth is really quick if you mix a nice amount of spawn. I even set some of these Pucks outside under plants that get watered lots (geeze , which ones could those be !?). They seemed to dry up every now and again , then get watered and it would rain and voila ... shroom 'oclock. I'd pick them and they'd return awhile later.

[hyphaenation]

I mentioned this some time ago in another thread but its worth repeating. This sub-strain of Redboy's really , really blues heavily. You can see it the picture of the second post. It helps that the stalks are a brilliant white usually , so the blue is that much more pronounced on freshies. Proof that they blue heavily comes in the form of blending the stalk in water. I discovered this by accident.

I took a piece of mario-brothers-style fat Redboy stalk and placed it in a small jar.I wanted to make isolate-blend-water. These jars have the perfect opening to house the blade assembly of an osterizer blender. I put that on and tighten.



Now the jar fits perfectly on the blender. See the bluing just from cutting the stalk ?



I zing it for a second or two in pulses , not to much.



Within seconds this is what happens to the water ! I have tried this with many persuasions of Cubensis , but have yet to find one that blues this dramatically and instantly. Its an obvious sign of magical properties abounding.



Reposted this only because it was buried away in some obscure thread and its Redboy-related.

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Edited by hyphaenation, 06 May 2012 - 04:48 PM.

[MycoDani]

I would love to have it growing underneath a plant one day!;)

[mate0x]

Can you PC the blender attachment?

[hyphaenation]

Can you PC the blender attachment?

Yes , but not at 15 PSI , something lower. Also cover in tinfoil to PC. Often times I just pour boiling water into the blender with the blade hooked up , let it sit there for some time , dump and then use blade assembly as shown above.

To suck back mycelium syringes , which is genearlly why you'd be blending stalk material like that , its good to have another lid of the same size handy with two silicone filled holes. One for your syringe and the other for Hippie3 airport syringe (click if you don't know what that is.)

Hippie3 Airport: https://mycotopia.ne...c/3588-airport/
 

Edited by hyphaenation, 03 March 2014 - 04:00 PM.

[mate0x]

Cool, this is way faster than making LC from clone tissue.

Time to buy a blender :)

[hyphaenation]

Cool, this is way faster than making LC from clone tissue.

Time to buy a blender :)

Cost under $20 , so not much of a set back ...

That TEK is called 9er , where you blend the stalk into mycelium syringes:

https://mycotopia.ne...-additions.html

http://mycotopia.net...ges/5/3383.html

I often use the pucks themselves for cloning. Just cut up sections of the stalk of the specimen shroom and add it to small puck sized sub-mix (small dip size container) instead of popcorn. With many strains/species the fragments of stalk will immediately turn white and grow on to the Puck in short order. Just make sure the Puck is something friendly to that shroom. The Puck will fully colonize and you fruit out a harvest of isolates ... Clone Puck.

Works quite well to get a clone army in fairly short order.

I'll be doing this right away as soon this Redboy fruits.

Edited by hyphaenation, 06 May 2012 - 08:06 PM.

[hyphaenation]

* Bonus Round *

Trivia Game

I'll send a fresh dark Redboy print from this grow to the first three people who correctly answers this 2 part question:

1. Who is this character ?
2. Why would he be relevant in this thread ?




PM me your answer. I will only respond with "no" if your wrong or "congratulations" and instructions if you get it right. You have to get both parts correct to win. Mods and admin are able to play , and even get a print , but there will definitely be one member winner , as long as one guesses right.

I'm doing the PM thing so that it makes it more interesting for the guessers as they don't see answers streaming by ...

There isn't a limit to how many times you can guess , but I can only respond to so many so keep it realistic.

Good luck.

Don't post your guesses here. Thanks.

Edited by hyphaenation, 06 May 2012 - 10:40 PM.

[hyphaenation]

We have our 3 winners already !

Might have made it to easy ... I'll do another contest at some point later on so don't be disappointed if you missed the boat.

Answer was Rodger Rabbit who first "snake-venom" bred the Redboy Cubensis...

Thanks for playing , more later.

Edited by hyphaenation, 07 May 2012 - 11:13 AM.

[psycheholic]

Maaaan lol, before you even asked the question I was thinking to myself I wonder if that is RR. I have hardly any knowledge of him except for what I read in the archives, so just pure luck. Too bad I didn't get a chance to participate.

[Lookin 2 Grow]

What kind of sub were you thinking on pressing ?

I've got on hand Hpoo, coir, verm & castings.

What would you recommend? Lately I've been using Hpoo & coir, but I'm thinking about throwing in some verm for this puck.

Man, I haven't seen a thread like this in ages. Loving it!!! Keep firing the info & tips out man.

So today is my dedicated puck day!!! I'm gonna make a 2lt puck cake :)

Cheers Hyph,

L2G

[charleyfish]

Those red boys look just like my pureto ricans i have and i get the same feedback . Do the fat ones grow in clusters ? Mine do . Well it looks good and alot of time and work you gotta love it .

[hyphaenation]

It's my understanding that Redboy was derived from Puerto Rican genes originally.

Quote:
RogerRabbit said:
After 20 years of sleeping, the RedBoy lives! A mycological Coup d'Etat had to be pulled off to get this mushroom back after 20 years. The spores would simply NOT germinate.

Monokaryotic Puerto Rico mycelium was allowed to crawl over the non-germinating original 20 year old redboy spores in a petri dish, resulting in a 50/50 cross between the redboy spores and the PR mycelium, without the original spores ever germinating, which they were no longer capable of after 20 years.

Rattlesnake venom was added to the agar after cooling to weaken both the cell walls of the spores, and the cell walls of the mycelium, allowing the nucleus from each to exchange genetic information between them. The experiment was duplicated with the offspring, resulting in a 75% pure strain, which was then released to the public.

The result is a 'cross' between the original UNgerminated redboy spores and a cubensis from Puerto Rico. Even though this is a cross,(NOT hybrid since it's two strains of the same species) you can clearly see the red color of the spores.

Enjoy.

Lookin: Yah , Horse flop/verm with or without coir would rock. Pasteurize it good and drain it real well before pressing the pucks. Hit them with a nice 30% spawn-rate.

Edited by hyphaenation, 07 May 2012 - 10:05 PM.

[Lookin 2 Grow]

Hey dude,

I didn't wanna turn your Redboy thread into a Puck thread.

So, I kicked off this one.

https://mycotopia.ne...tml#post1147221

Any advice would be great.

I'm freestyling it right now..

Peace, L2G

[hyphaenation]

48 hour update:

There's been some changes , so I thought I'd report in ...

Logs are really starting to kick in now. Super happy with how they are moving along.



The Pucks are doing good also. I'm not going to mess around with them for the sake of a good picture though , you get the idea.



The tubs are starting to take off and the mycelium is going rhyzo and reaching out like fluffy fingers. Fingers crossed on continued good growth ... apologies for the crappy quality pictures. My camera is not so good.



It's starting to get interesting ... stay tuned.

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Edited by hyphaenation, 08 May 2012 - 12:43 AM.

[tricktek]

We have our 3 winners already !

Might have made it to easy ... I'll do another contest at some point later on so don't be disappointed if you missed the boat.

Answer was Rodger Rabbit who first "snake-venom" bred the Redboy Cubensis...

Thanks for playing , more later.

Are you announcing the winners or just pm'ing them?
I truly enjoy reading and learning from your threads hyph, and I'm loving this masterpiece!